


Tweet: #23

by Ignisentis



Series: 32 Ways To Say I Love You [23]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Has A Secret Twitter Account, Idiots in Love, M/M, Steve Knows What He Looks Like In A Henley, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Why Are Potatoes?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:08:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22579087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ignisentis/pseuds/Ignisentis
Summary: Bucky gets his official Twitter account. And an unofficial one.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: 32 Ways To Say I Love You [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1602352
Comments: 33
Kudos: 218





	Tweet: #23

**Author's Note:**

> Bucky, you beautiful troll.

A few months after Bucky moves into the Tower, Steve gets called into a meeting with Pepper’s PR team. Well, technically they’re the Avengers’ PR team, but Pepper had put them together, and she was the liaison between them and the team. And anyway, Pepper gets shit  _ done,  _ which was a trait Steve always admired in a person. Therefore, they were Pepper’s PR Team.

He looks around the room when he walks in, realizing he’s the only Avenger there. Which seems odd for an Avengers PR meeting.

“Uh...where’s the rest of the team?” he asks, to no one in particular.

“Oh, we’re just waiting on Ms. Potts to join us, and then we can get started,” one of the interns — Nora, Steve recalls — informs him.

Steve frowns. “I thought this was an Avengers PR meeting?”

“I…” Nora freezes, eyes widening as she looks at him. Steve can see the undertones of her dark skin get more pronounced as she blushes. 

“That’s okay, I probably misread the email, Nora.” He hadn’t, but she didn’t send the initial email, so no use taking it out on her. “If you have an agenda, though, I’d love to see one.”

“Oh. Of course,” Nora recovers quickly and shuffles some papers around, giving a little a-ha when she finds the one she’s looking for. She passes it over with a tight smile, and Steve returns it with a genuine one of his own, hoping to make her feel more at ease. He knows how intimidating he can be, uses it to his advantage all the time, but he isn’t interested in hassling someone who very clearly hasn’t done anything wrong. It works, thankfully: Nora’s shoulders drop into a more relaxed position, and her blush is fading.

Steve looks at the agenda he’s just been given, and there’s only one item on it, which initially makes him wonder why this meeting couldn’t have just been an email instead, but then he actually reads it:

  1. Activate Twitter account for James “Bucky” Barnes.



“No,” Steve says reflexively, just as Pepper swoops into the room.

“Ah, Steve, keeping an open mind as always, I hear,” she says around a wry grin.

“Pepper,” he says around his own grin, standing up to give her a quick hug and kiss on the cheek. He waits until she’s sitting down across the table from him before he takes his own seat again.

“That wasn’t an outright ‘no, he can’t have Twitter,’ it was a ‘no, I’m not deciding this for him without his input.’” Steve pauses to look at the PR team, who do look abashed. “So why isn’t he here?” he says, addressing Pepper.

Pepper looks to Jacob, who’s the social media director for the team, who looks to Erin, who’s the overall team leader. She narrows her eyes a little, seemingly annoyed that Jacob has punted this task to her, before she looks to Steve and says, “we thought asking you first might help us know if he’s ready for this level of engagement, since you two are together.”

Steve leans back in his chair and folds his arms over his chest. He’s wearing one of Bucky’s henleys that had gotten into his laundry, so it’s a little tight, and he’s aware of what it does to people when he’s in a tight shirt and he flexes his arms somehow. Most of the time, people get aroused. But if he’s upset when he does it, like he is now? They get scared. 

Jacob and Erin are professionals, they can handle him literally flexing his muscle in this meeting. Pepper knows what he’s doing, judging by the smirk on her face, and she isn’t stopping him. Interesting. 

He lets everyone stew for a minute before he starts talking. “I know you’ve all seen the file, that part of your job is to manage questions that come in about it. Which means you know how many years he spent without the ability to choose things for himself. I thought I had been clear about this before, but maybe I wasn’t, so to make this completely clear now: I will not make decisions like this on his behalf without his input. If you want to know if he’s ready for something or if he wants to do something, you need to talk to him. Or both of us at the same time, but he absolutely needs to be part of the conversation. 

“So to that end,” Steve stands up and looks around the room again. The PR team look a little ashamed, which is good. They should, he’s pissed they went behind Bucky’s back like that. Pepper looks vindicated, like she told them this was going to be the outcome and they forged ahead anyway. “Meeting adjourned,” he says. “If you want me to sit in when you meet with Bucky about this, you can ask him if that’s what he wants. If he doesn’t, I’ll consider this the end of my involvement.”

As he’s leaving the room, Steve thinks, “damn it, that  _ could _ have been an email.”

~~~

Bucky decides not to have Steve sit in with him at his Twitter meeting, and he comes back to their floor the proud owner of @JamesBBarnes, verified and everything. He boots up his laptop and shows Steve his account: his bio that the PR team had carefully worked out, the profile pic guaranteed not to offend anyone, the careful introduction Tweets. He shows Steve who he’s following so far, which turns out to be the rest of the Avengers and some account that compares Steve to golden retrievers. Which...fuck, that’s funny, he’s gonna follow that account, too.

“You’re really okay with this?” Steve asks him, and Bucky nods. 

“It’s interesting. Some people are really mean to each other, but it can be an okay place sometimes. Come here, take a picture with me. I want to post it.”

“Yeah?” Steve asks, scooting next to Bucky as he opens the front-facing camera on his phone. 

“Yeah. I’m gonna take a few, post the best one. So, okay, cheese!”

Bucky smiles, and Steve smiles, too, before turning his head and kissing Bucky’s cheek. Bucky ends up posting that one. It breaks the internet for a little while.

~~~

Steve’s sitting on the couch dicking around on his phone. Bucky is laying on the other end, legs splayed across Steve’s lap, dicking around on his phone, too. Steve’s running his free hand up and down Bucky’s shin when he gets a text.

**Natasha:** check out #CaptainAssmerica

**Steve:** why would I want to do that?

**Natasha:** it’s funny, just do it.

Steve sighs heavily.

**Natasha:** You just sighed, didn’t you?

**Steve:** Shouldn’t you be strangling someone with your thighs instead of bothering me? I thought you were on a mission.

**Natasha:** Multitasking, Steve.

**Natasha:** Don’t sigh again.

Steve sighs just to spite her but opens up Twitter anyway and types in the hashtag. “What the fuck?” he says when it loads. The whole hashtag is full of cropped photos of his ass, taken from news clips or interviews or photo shoots. Any time he’s had his back to the camera, it seems. Most of the Tweets have a photo or screenshot with the word “Mood” and the hashtag, and that’s it. They seem to originate from a user with the handle @BuckOff. Steve clicks on their name to see what this person is about.

The profile pic is some kind of cool art of Bucky’s metal arm, which ah, now he gets it: Buck Off. But the bio is just “Why are Potatoes?” and that’s just...weird. The account makes a lot of posts about cute animals, specifically cats, random things with “mood” written on top and some sort of hashtag, and bizarre questions, phrases, or life observations. There are also Tweets with all manner of various photos with only the text “this is Steve” in the Tweet. 

What the hell? Steve looks at the account’s followers, and holy shit, they have over 2 million. They’re only following one person, though, so he clicks on it, and it’s...him. The account only follows him.

“What the hell?” he says out loud, which makes Bucky look up from his phone with a question on his face. “Oh, just this Twitter account,” Steve tells him. “It’s weird. Well, it’s goofy and kind of funny, but also a little obsessed with me?”

Steve does some more digging as he’s talking. “Huh. And it turns out there are some theories that the person behind this account is actually...you.” Steve turns his head to look at Bucky, see what he has to say for himself.

“What’s the handle?”

“@BuckOff.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s definitely me.”

“Bucky! What the hell?! Why are you posting about my ass?” Steve asks, taken aback.

“Steve. Babe. Have you  _ seen _ your ass? Goddamn national treasure, that’s what it is.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Heh. You said butt.”

Steve tries not to laugh, he really,  _ really  _ tries, but alas, that is one battle he most definitely loses.

“So...what,” he asks when he’s regained his composure. “Is this for trolling or something?”

Bucky shrugs. “Kind of, yeah. And for shitposting. It’s fun. People can’t decide if it’s me or not. I like to keep them guessing. You should follow me with your official account. That would be hilarious!”

“...yeah, okay, I will.”

“Seriously?”

Steve shrugs. “Why not? If it will help your shitposting and make you happy.”

“Aww, thanks, Captain Assmerica.”

“I take it back. No happiness for you.”

“Steve!” Bucky gasps, pulling his legs off Steve’s lap so he can kneel upright on the couch. “Not even a little?”

“Nope!” Steve chirps. “Not even a little.”

Bucky scoots his way next to Steve and climbs onto his lap. “What about a tiny, itsy bitsy amount of happiness?”

“Nope. Just unhappiness.”

“If only there was some way I could persuade you,” Bucky pouts, rolling his hips. 

Steve tosses his phone down on the couch and grips Bucky’s hips, fingers digging into his flesh through his sweats. “Well, you can  _ try, _ but you know how stubborn I can be.”

Bucky grins lasciviously and gets to work.


End file.
